“It's a canon event” spoke the writing team behind Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and thus a thousand memes were born. And look, I love the Spider-verse movies. They are a testament and a love letter to animation and the specific ways in which it alone can tell stories; I’m a Spidey fanboy from way back in the day, starting with Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends and going through all the reboots, sequels, prequels, what ifs, and timey-wimey shenanigans. But the movie’s egregious use of the word canon? I just can’t let this pass1.
Here’s the deal: in the film (no spoilers), our boy Miles Morales prevents a tragic death. In doing so, he disrupts a “canon event” that, in consequence, undoes the entire universe of a particular Spider-Man. If that made no sense, well, go watch the movies. Anyway, within the film the phrase “canon event” eventually comes to mean an event that has to happen or the desired outcome will not happen. And that is some seriously predeterministic2 thinking that should have been thrown out the door with Johns Calvin and Milton and all their lost paradises.
Worse than that, this use of canon implies that there is somehow a right or correct outcome. But, according to whom? In other words, if preventing a canon event creates an undesirable outcome, well, who gets to decide which outcomes are desirable? Just because a given Spider-Man says that this outcome is the one that should be doesn’t make it true. (And don’t even get me started on event. I mean, what is an event? When does it start? Finish? And who decides anyway?) And all of this who-gets-to-decide-what is kind of the whole problem with canon to begin with.
So, let’s back up. What is canon again? Exactly? Here’s Merriam-Webster:
a regulation or dogma decreed by a church council
Well. That’s not exactly all of it. In fact, that’s just the first definition. Merriam-Webster goes on to give a further eleven definitions3, most of which share one idea in common: canon is the accepted body of work, or rules, or standards used to describe something.
Unfortunately, canon can also be a shorthand for “because I said so.” Whether used by the clergy, curriculum designers, or comic book writers, it’s treated as though it were some kind of natural principle in the same way that two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen make water. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Canon, in its earliest, Greek form, first meant a straight rod or bar. From there that idea of a rigid, inflexible thing lent itself to describing a rule or standard. From there, the Church borrowed the word and used it to describe their rule and their standard. Eventually, the word drifted within these religious contexts to mean the accepted books of the Bible and from there to church decree based on their interpretation of the Holy Canon.
A couple of centuries later, the word was borrowed again, this time from the church and applied to music (not just church music), the list of accepted saints, and books of law. And then, finally, we get the fandom moment when canon is borrowed once more and applied to Sherlock Holmes. From there, well, things get rough.
adherence to canon without questioning, examining, or revising the canon leads to stagnation, dogma, and blind acceptance of predetermined roles
Because in modern parlance, canon is often used as a way of gatekeeping fandoms from those people (often women, people of color, people with non-conforming gender or sexual identities, and so on) that some parts of the fandom do not want intruding on “their” space. Notably, the Star Wars and James Bond franchises have had issues with this in recent years. Just look at what happened when an Asian woman showed up as a love interest in Star Wars and a Black actor was put forward as the next 007. Certain sections of the fandom became incensed because, ahem, it’s not canon.
As frustrating as that can be in fandoms, it’s even more disturbing in academia where, as noted above, canon is often shorthand for something you have to study because the powers that be have decided that it is something you need to study*. We see this in modern lit., in languages, even in the sciences when reading the background histories. And this is not to say that you shouldn’t read the books or articles that comprise the canon, it’s that adherence to canon without questioning, examining, or revising the canon leads to stagnation, dogma, and blind acceptance of predetermined roles.
Which is a problem because in none of its myriad definitions or its long history, does canon mean predetermined. Canon defines what’s included, not what’s inevitable. And this leads me to two points: one, canon is made up. Completely. By people who may have students and learners and even civilization at large’s best interest in mind. But also by people who want to control how other people think and act. Two, even when something is accepted as part of a canon, it does not need to be adhered to without questioning and without examination.
Now, just to give the Devil his advocate, there is an argument to be made that adherence to a canon creates a standardized base of thought from which new insights can be made. Most notably Harold Bloom thought that having a literary canon created and curated a cultural legacy upon which a redoubtable society could be built.
This is bullshit. And hey, it’s not just me saying so. You can read bell hooks, Toni Morrison, or even Edward Said. Of course, once you start doing that, you realize that none of them are old white men and thus in immediate conflict with good old Harold and his legion of dead white guys. To be fair, Nietzsche also challenged the idea of a canon, although he was concerned with a philosophical one, not a literary one, and he was an old white guy!4
The point is, arguments for establishing a canon can, and have been made, in many different contexts across the centuries. Certainly some very well-intentioned people have made efforts at making inclusive, encompassing lists of books and schools of thought. But no matter how well-intentioned, canon always boils down to somebody deciding what you should think.
So, when someone tells you something is canon, tell them to prove it. Make them show you exactly why this book or article or piece of thought or even, God forbid, event is so necessary that it must be adhered to blindly and without question. Spoiler alert, they can’t. And thus your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to fight the man on his own home turf. Challenge the canon, advocate for the disenfranchised, and always, always, damn the man.
Stay curious,
Joel
Also, am I using pop culture to over-explain an esoteric vocabulary word experiencing a minor bit of semantic drift? Hi! Welcome to Learned. Get your popcorn and find a seat, the show’s just getting started.
Predeterminism has had a long and lasting effect on Western literature, especially in the works of Mark Twain. And, damn but I do love the man’s writing but he did use his belief in predeterminism to absolve himself of some truly bad decisions along the way.
Including the word cañon, which is just a different way of spelling canyon.
Speaking dead white guys, Twain was a critic of the Western Canon, often challenging the idea of just what kind of books could be considered a classic. How ironic, then, that so many of his books ended up on those same lists.